


A Very Bad Vacation in the Eastern Slav Republic

by Swamp_Dog



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Just a smooch, The Eastern Slavs actually speak Russian now lol, aeon - Freeform, brief leon x ada moment, buddy - Freeform, damnation, knife arms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 16:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30024423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swamp_Dog/pseuds/Swamp_Dog
Summary: Leon's west coast beach vacation is interrupted by an urgent call to investigate the conflict in the Eastern Slav Republic, where B.O.W.s are possibly being used. Leon goes to investigate, but he's also got his own B.O.W. to deal with: the plaga parasite, which has managed to regenerate, along with the deadly bladed weapons it gave him.-This is basically a re-write of the entire Damnation movie but with knife arms, where I also attempted to fix the unclear writing and dialogue of the film, and still keep it interesting to people who have seen the movie already. If you haven't seen Damnation, you don't have to to follow this fic! This story covers the whole plot.
Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy/Ada Wong
Comments: 18
Kudos: 16





	1. Some Peace and Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> If you have seen the movie, you know there is a mention of suicide in the story, so I will tag that chapter appropriately for the trigger warning. 
> 
> There is a little bit of Leon x Ada smooch but it's one scene. 
> 
> I don't know what it does to my paragraph formatting but I just let it do it's thing lmao.
> 
> Did I change the ending? Huehuehue maybe

The crashing of waves ahead lured Leon down the narrow, rocky pathway, twisting between cedars and hemlocks. The stones that made the crude stairway were worn and smooth beneath his bare feet, before they gave way to the sand of the grey beach ahead of him. He stood and took in the panorama of the Washington coastline, the craggy tree-topped rocks that bordered the lonely stretch of beach on either side, and the driftwood that had accumulated in sparse piles. 

After scanning the perimeter one more time, he breathed the west coast air in deeply and pulled his shirt over his head, dropping it on a driftwood log beside the entrance to the little path—a marker to find it again. 

He stretched his arms to the sky and laced his fingers together, letting them rest on top of his head as he walked down the sand. The constant roar of the waves drowned out most other sounds, except the faint chirping of birds in the forest behind him. The first two days here had been overcast, rainy, foggy. He hadn’t expected much more than that, but today the pale blue-pink morning sky stretched all the way to the horizon as the sun rose behind the trees at his back. 

He scanned the forest again, but with just a passing glance this time. Even miles and miles from the nearest person he kept vigilant, but he felt himself relax that vigilance a little bit more with each day he spent here. He felt almost  _ normal _ here… 

He unlaced his fingers to reach back with one hand, and felt the hard, smooth curve of the blade he expected to find. The two chitinous limbs between his shoulder blades carefully unfolded until they stretched out to their full length, with the pointed blade tips dragging a thin trail in the sand alongside his footprints. 

No, he still wasn’t normal. But no one else was here to tell him otherwise. 

The scythe-bladed arms, remnants of the plaga he thought he’d destroyed in Spain, had taken some work to manage after they resurfaced years later. How was he supposed to know the mad-scientist cocktail of organisms he’d been injected with included the regenerator parasites, or that those would manage to regenerate the mutated plaga itself? 

Leon shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Those events had been on his mind too much, and that’s not what he was here for. He was here to think of something,  _ anything _ else. He reached the point where the water gently lapped across the wet sand and stood in its path, watching his feet as the gentle waves rushed around them. The water was cold, but it did its job of pulling his mind out of the past. 

What should he do for the rest of the day? He had stocked the fridge and pantry when he came here. He could cook something nice, maybe that steak… 

He folded the scythe blades up tightly against his back again and started heading back towards the path, still thinking of things to do. 

There was a short hiking trail nearby he could walk, or maybe he would make some coffee and just sit and listen to the birds. No one could call him lazy on vacation. Maybe he would just take a big nap and then go outside at midnight to look at the stars. It had been a long time since he had been excited to do nothing of use.

He collected his shirt and threw it over his shoulder as he climbed the worn rocky path. A wood-sided cabin stood at the top, simple, but surrounded by cedars and ferns to the point that it nearly blended in. Perfect for someone who didn’t want to be found. 

He toweled his sandy feet off and moseyed, still shirtless, into the kitchen…before taking a few steps back. On the dining table, alongside his keys and wallet, was his satellite phone. The little red light was blinking on it. He stared for a long moment. 

It was probably Hunnigan checking up on him during his vacation; she loved to keep tabs. He turned to head back into the kitchen until he heard the phone vibrate, and then chime. 

That wasn’t a good sign. He stepped over to the table and picked up the phone, waking up the screen.

Three missed calls. 

One voicemail. 

Two texts. 

As he numbly read the texts telling him to call back, and then listened to the voicemail telling him he was needed urgently in a war-torn European country, rage welled up in his chest. He had finally been starting to relax for once here, and not even three whole days in, the government was snatching it away from him. 

The relaxed, peaceful clarity in his mind disappeared, rapidly replaced with the sharp, cynical, logical mindset he carried on missions. He tried to calm himself down, making excuses for why they needed him. 

What happened in Raccoon City, in Spain, all of that could happen again in some new country if he didn’t investigate. Thousands of people would be lost to an enemy they barely even understood. Yes, it was for the good of the people there, even if they were people he didn’t know. That made it worth leaving… this.

He looked around the cabin, as if taking it all in for the last time, because he probably was. He had made sure no one could find him here… except Ingrid Hunnigan. Whatever good mood he had been in was gone with that one mistake.

Leon waited several minutes, staring at the phone, and then headed to his room to start packing. 

* * *

  
  


By the time Leon had gone through several layovers and reached the Eastern Slav Republic’s small airport, his rage had tempered into a dull discomfort that sat like a knot in his chest. The heavy duffle bag he carried with him got him some looks, or maybe it was the fact that he was American who didn’t speak a word of the language here, but his badge got him through the checkpoints, and some basic locations and gesturing got him a taxi to a hotel a “safe” distance from the hostilities. 

The stark contrast between the bare-bones hotel and the little cabin was immediately clear. He had only the most basic necessities and nothing more here. Maybe he would be able to find the evidence he needed within a day, and be done with the whole investigation before it got out of hand. It was wishful thinking, and he knew it. 

He set his bag on the table with a heavy thud and zipped it open. A bullet-proof vest lay atop his disassembled rifle and enough ammo magazines for a whole squad. He reached to the side of all those and pulled out an orange pill bottle instead, shaking two little red and white pills into his hand. 

It had taken a significant amount of research and dedication on the BSAA’s part, but thanks to Luis’s initial research back in the plaga-infected Spanish village, they had been able to engineer a medication to suppress the parasite that currently called him home. It meant his scythe-bladed attachments grew back smaller the last time they were hacked off, and his body didn’t regenerate as well as it did, but it also meant the spikes didn’t grow back and his extra arms didn’t try to lash out against his will. 

He could tuck them up against himself with a big enough jacket now, and no one knew the difference. The extra joints that had grown on the most recent rendition helped him hide them better as well…even if they now looked weirder and more gangly when extended.

He popped two of the pills into his mouth and washed them down with the whiskey in his flask before pulling out the rifle and beginning to assemble it. He checked his watch as he did. 

It was in the early morning hours, still dark outside. If he wanted to find any evidence, he might as well get going. Breakfast could wait. 


	2. Scarecrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon goes rogue in a foreign country, and it doesn't pan out so well for him.

Leon looked both ways at the edge of the street, but he wasn’t just looking for passing cars. At the far end of the street, he could hear unintelligible yelling and gunfire. He darted across when it seemed no one was looking his way, ducking into an alley to jam himself into a little corner, sheltered from the street. He hadn’t seen a single B.O.W. in any of the skirmishes he caught glimpses of, but maybe that contact he was headed towards, “Scarecrow,” would know more. He pulled out his phone. He’d been told to check in before meeting the contact, just in case. A woman’s face appeared on the screen. 

“Hunnigan, I’m in position. Can you see my location?” 

“Affirmative. I’ve got a clear view of you from our satellite, but Leon, there’s been an update…”

“So you can get me to the drop-off location… wait, why doesn’t that sound good? Did you get a confirmation on the B.O.W.s being used?”

She shook her head.

“No, I’m afraid your mission there has been aborted. The U.S. is pulling out of the whole country, and you need to get out of there as soon as you can.” 

Leon stared back incredulously at the little glowing screen. 

“What? I just got here! You pull me off furlough and send me to this  _ godforsaken _ place just to abort my mission?!”

“Washington has parted with the government there and they’ve ordered all Americans to evacuate the country. It was less than an hour ago, I’m sorry Leon…” 

He looked up at the sky, the rage he felt at leaving the cabin coming back full force. He practically had a snarl when he looked back at the phone. 

“I don’t care about the politics. If I’m already losing my free time to go here in the first place, then I’m gonna do my job whether they tell me I  _ can _ or not.”

“What are you talking about? This is a  _ war _ and you no longer have government support as an American over there!”

He huffed caustically. 

“Then I guess I’m losing my American citizenship for a while.”

“Leon—!”

He ended the call and jammed the phone back into his pocket, absolutely fuming. He would find the CIA intel drop-off on his own. 

He kept moving forward, slinking away from the sound of tanks and mortars and general chaos. He finally found the far quieter parking garage he was looking for on an empty street. 

Well, mostly empty—there was a small cluster of box trucks parked along the street, with a bright, cartoony bee logo that was in noticeable contrast with the war-torn European architecture around it. He couldn’t read what it was actually a logo for, and the trucks had probably been abandoned when the military came through this part of town anyway. 

The distant, fiery plume of an explosion rising over buildings at the end of the street caught his attention. Better keep moving. 

The parking garage was eerily dark inside, with the sparse fluorescent lights only creating dim pools of visibility, so he flicked on the flashlight on his rifle and kept the barrel pointed ahead just in case. Somewhere in the dark, “Scarecrow” was supposed to be waiting, but he certainly wasn’t making himself obvious. 

A gurgling sound made him snatch the rifle to his left, where he found, unfortunately, Scarecrow. The older man was staggering, blood-splattered, and trying to choke something out. Leon rushed over to him as he fell to the concrete floor. 

“Hey what happened? Are you Scarecrow? I’m the Tinman,” he said quickly, using the codename he’d been told to use before everything went south. 

The man just gurgled and choked, trying to speak, but not getting much out. 

“Hang in there, I’ll get you out of here.” As he stood up, the man grabbed the leg of his jeans and gripped the fabric tightly, keeping him in place. 

“B…Bee…”

“What?” Leon crouched down again. 

“Bee… k…keeper…” the man said with great difficulty. 

“Beekeeper?” Leon furrowed his brows. “Does it have to do with those trucks outside? With the bee logo on them?”

The man’s eyes widened, and his face went from struggling to fear. 

Before he could ask more questions, or reassure the man that he was going to get help, an inhuman snarl snapped through the garage. Leon looked up just in time to see a grotesque, skinless licker leaping straight for him, and he managed to throw himself out of its path. By the time he scrambled back up, the creature had ended Scarecrow’s suffering with lethal efficiency, and was angling towards Leon on its four legs once again. The eyeless monster had the sound of his location now, and there was no going back. 

Gunshots ripped through the previously quiet garage as Leon unloaded his rifle at the creature, which evaded his shots with surprising skill. It scampered over cars, up the concrete pillars, and across the ceiling before launching an attack on him again. He managed to land a few shots as he ducked beneath it, but it only seemed mildly inconvenienced by them when it landed. The monster took off again, this time straight down the length of the garage. Leon gave chase, sprinting after it. If it was running away, he needed to know where it was going. 

It had just reached the far wall of the garage, where he thought he might be able to corner it, when an ear-splitting explosion knocked him back the way he came. 

Concrete and car pieces flew in all directions as he tumbled and skid across the floor, then finally landed in a heap. 

It took him several moments to realize he was lying still and not still tumbling, as his brain told him he was. Dust settled all around him while reality flickered in and out of existence. He couldn’t tell if he was really hearing the deep growling of the licker or if he was just imagining it now. 

He shakily looked up to find that, unfortunately, the creature was indeed slowly stalking closer to him. Or was he just hallucinating it? It didn’t quite feel real. He caught sight of a figure approaching from behind the monster with a casual stride—a mustached old man in tinted glasses and a flat cap. 

The man stood right next to the monster and motioned to it, causing it to harmlessly lower the claw it had just raised to end Leon like it had Scarecrow. This had to be a dream. A wave of dizziness washed over him and his head fell back to the floor, before the little grounding in reality he had—the concrete’s cool dusty surface against his face—slipped away. 


	3. A Little Tied Up at the Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon meets Eastern Slav's freedom fighters in a cozy little basement except it's not very cozy and he's zip tied to a chair.

The general ache of everything in his body was what Leon noticed first as he came to, especially his neck, for some reason. The second thing he noticed was that he was tied to a chair with his head hanging down at a painful angle. That explained one hurt at least. 

He tried to ignore the headache that had developed, and looked around in confusion at his strange surroundings: a dark room with only faint moonlight pouring from between the floorboards above. Or at least it  _ was _ faint moonlight, until he heard rapid banging on a door above him, and what sounded like the military bursting into the space he couldn’t see, shining flashlights as they went. 

The light briefly illuminated, sitting at the edge of the room, the mustached old man. He sat still, staring at Leon. 

The foreign, Slavic-sounding yelling above didn’t mean anything to him, but he had a feeling they might be more agreeable than whoever had tied him to the chair. He drew in a breath to yell, only to feel a hand clamp down over his mouth. The point of a knife dug into his throat. 

He got the message. But in case he hadn’t, a blonde man studded in piercings and a low-cut mohawk appeared in front of him, silently making a shushing motion. He was, more noticeably, wearing Leon’s bulletproof vest and gun, which he had just realized was missing. The devilish face he made told Leon that he was pretty darn proud of it too. 

The men above them finally cleared out of the house, leaving the basement dark and quiet once again. The hand and knife both fell away, and he finally saw who they belonged to as the man walked around the chair and turned on an overhead light.

He was tall, black-haired, and had a sharp, angular face that carried a stoic expression. His unshaven scruff and plain coat gave Leon a pretty good idea who he was—a member of the freedom fighters, part of the rebellion in this country’s civil war. He seemed a perfect contrast to the short, round-ish blonde wearing his vest. 

They spoke back and forth briefly in the same language as those above, he assumed was Russian, before the blonde one pulled out a flashlight—Leon’s flashlight—and started obnoxiously shining it in his eyes with a grin.

“And what about our hostage here, you think he will be of any use?” he asked in a significant accent, but clearly used English for Leon’s benefit this time.

“You know who we are?” Asked the second one, in an even heavier accent that Leon had a hard time understanding. 

“I’m gonna assume you’re not Dorothy.”

The tall one just narrowed his eyes, but the other one’s face lit up and he smacked him on the arm. 

“That’s a reference! To that old American movie! I got that!” The look he received let him know the reference was not appreciated. 

“You, CIA calls us  _ terrorists _ ,” spat the tall one. 

“But WE like to call ourselves Pro Independence Fighters,” said the vest-thief, thumping his chest in a cocky way that had Leon wondering if he knew he was in a warzone or not. He seemed to have a better handle on English than the other one, at any rate. 

The tall one turned to the other and rapidly spoke something in Russian, then motioned back to Leon. It appeared Leon had guessed correctly about who knew more English. 

“What’s the CIA doing here, huh? Are you working with the government to cause all this? Are there more of you sneaking around the city?” Every phrase the blonde spoke was accentuated with a hand gesture. Next to his animated movements, the other man was practically a statue. 

“I’m not a CIA agent. I’m just a regular American who was  _ screwed _ out of his vacation, dumped on a plane, and brought to this place. I haven’t even had  _ breakfast _ .” The last part was completely unnecessary to add, but his anger was welling up again, even tied to a chair in an Eastern Slav basement. Maybe  _ especially _ tied to a chair in this place.

“They came for you while you were on vacation? Buddy! This guy’s got to be pretty high up in the CIA for them to do that! That’s like Mission Impossible 2! Did they come in on a helicopter to get you…?”

“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Leon said with a sigh. 

The tall one, “Buddy,” stepped up since his comrade seemed to be overwhelmed with thoughts of action movies. 

“Then what are you? Is this normal in America? To have gun like this, in vacation?” He grabbed the rifle around the man’s neck and shook it for emphasis. 

“Oh yeah, you ever been to Texas? You grab your keys, your wallet, and your AR-15 on your way out the door.”

The blonde gasped. 

“America’s the BOMB, YO—” He was cut off by Buddy shoving the rifle back to him with a glare, then glowering at Leon. 

“Still, you are…” He looked to the blonde and spoke a word in Russian, questioningly.    
“ _ Special _ ,” answered the other one in a whisper. 

“Still, you are  _ special _ for America to send you here. You did fight that thing after all.”

Leon leaned forward, his face pulling into a mild snarl. 

“If you don’t stop messing around with that  _ thing, _ you’re going to get yourselves killed—”

He was cut off by a loud coughing fit from across the room, coming from the previously quiet old man. Buddy strode over to him quickly to talk to him quietly in Russian. The man waved him off, but he seemed reluctant to leave him alone. 

The interruption brought an end to their brief interrogation for now. Buddy spoke with the blonde one for a while before slinging the strap of a gun around his neck, an AKM by the looks of it, and disappearing through a wooden door. 

Leon leaned back in the chair, staring at the floorboards above him. The break from being interrogated was nice. He’d have to take what he could get now, with no telling when he might ever get vacation again. 

The silence in the room lasted for a long while, at least an hour, only interrupted by the old man’s coughing and the vest thief’s frequent humming of the Mission Impossible theme. The coughing seemed to get more intense, until Leon finally broke the silence himself. 

“Hey, you.” He nodded to the blonde, who immediately looked offended and stopped drinking from Leon’s stolen flask. 

“My name is not  _ Hey You,  _ it’s JD!” He struck what could have been a gang pose as he said it. “I mean that’s not my real name, but…”

“The old man’s not looking too good.” 

JD looked between Leon and the old man before shrugging. 

“He always looks like that.” 

Leon huffed. 

“Let’s hope you’re right,” he said quietly. He was still staring at the old man when JD grabbed his shoulder and started shaking it violently.

“So what are you doing in Eastern Slav!” 

“Come on, I answered this already!”

“No no, I mean… America’s way better than being here, right?” 

Leon glowered back. 

“I wouldn’t know.” 

“Come on, the hamburgers, man! The fried chicken! The food in your country is fantastic! I could eat it  _ every day! _ ”

Leon couldn’t say he enjoyed being reminded of food at the moment. 

“Thanks, for the… valuable culinary insight…”

JD’s enthusiasm was undeterred, and he started shaking Leon’s shoulders again. The smell of whiskey and general lack of a shower was overpowering. 

“And the MOVIES you make over there! I love them! I have like fifty DVDs, even some black and white ones!”

“I thought you guys hated America, huh?”

JD shrugged again. 

“Sure, we hate it. But things MADE in America…” He specifically grabbed the vest he was wearing. “Now that’s different.” He twirled around and went back to pacing the basement, humming a tune again.

Leon sighed. He had a lead now, but no way to follow it while tied to a chair, and JD didn’t seem like he would be very helpful either. He shifted his shoulders slightly. 

The blades folded against his back shifted as well… If he moved just right, he could easily slip the end of one out and cut the zip ties around his wrists, but he wasn’t sure his regeneration was currently up to fixing a barrage of bullets if the America fanatic realized he was free. 

Speaking of which, how many hours had passed? Had he missed a dose? 

He narrowed his eyes at the vest. He even knew which pocket his pills were in, but going for them would be too risky. He wasn’t sure they would believe him, or even care, if he claimed he had a sudden medical requirement. He certainly couldn’t tell them the real reason he needed them. He was already lucky they hadn’t searched him further for weapons, and only took his gear. 

A ringtone interrupted JD’s humming. He started patting down the vest, trying to find the source, before pulling out Leon’s satellite phone. 

For a brief moment, Leon got a spark of hope. Maybe they would answer, and negotiate with the DSO, maybe let him talk to them… 

“Oh no no, I’ve seen this one,” JD said, wagging his finger. “There’s no way I’m letting them trace the call here!” 

He slammed the phone into the floor, gave it a stomp or two until the screen cracked and went dark, and then looked back to his hostage with a sneer. 

Leon’s face had the cool, collected smile of a man contemplating the murder of at least 50 DVDs. 

The wooden door finally opened again, and Buddy emerged through it. The two went back and forth casually in Russian, and Leon assumed they were giving each other updates. The old man continued to cough through it, and the two exchanged worried looks. 

A bang on the door above drew their attention in an instant. The yelling above had returned, and whoever it was sounded adamant this time. The freedom fighters didn’t even have time to turn out the light before the door to the house was broken open, and many pairs of boots were loudly descending the stairs. 

Leon wondered if this was his chance to escape, or the end of the road. JD planted himself in front of the basement door, rifle at the ready. Buddy was still scrambling to grab his rifle. However, Leon caught a distinct sound he could make out even without knowing the language—a countdown. 

He lunged forward like an adrenaline-powered rocket and slammed into JD’s side, knocking him out of the way just before an explosion blew open the door. 

The Eastern Slav military poured into the basement, shouting and pointing guns. The others put their hands in the air, replying back to their demands, while the old man’s coughing became more violent. 

Leon stood back up, keeping his bound hands behind him...and then slowly slipped a blade out beneath his black jacket. No one noticed the yellow plastic tie fall to the ground, or the sharp point that disappeared beneath his jacket again. 

The sound of the old man’s coughing suddenly made Leon tense up. It started to sound different, familiar in a way that made his blood run cold. He could see him between the soldiers, could see that his skin was pale… grey even… 

“Stay away from him! He’s turned!” he warned loudly. The soldiers looked at him in confusion… maybe they didn’t know English very well either. 

Buddy grabbed the gun of the nearest soldier and turned it back on the military, throwing the room into a melee of shouting and gunfire. Leon dove behind anything he could use for cover, a low shelf in this case, while bullets flew in every direction. 

Eventually the chaos quieted as the soldiers in the room were cut down and the three freedom fighters fled through the door Buddy had used earlier. Leon waited quietly, listening to more soldiers file in, find the chaos, and take off down the tunnels as well. 

It was only once things were completely calm that he crawled out of hiding. He thought about going up top, risking running past the military to attempt getting to the border, if he couldn’t make it to the airport… but his leads were fleeing through the underground tunnel beyond the door. 

He didn’t have much time. He quickly reached for a soldier’s pistol before pausing. Gunshots would broadcast where he was to everyone, freedom fighters and military alike…maybe it was a bad idea. He sighed, looked at the dusty rays of moonlight coming from the floorboards above, and headed into the tunnel with just his wits and a pair of knife arms.


	4. The Tunnels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon makes his escape, but he runs into JD and a few of his old "friends" along the way.

Leon kept his scythes low while he crept through the tunnels. He slowed down when he heard the familiar voices of his three former captors up ahead, just around a corner. He desperately wished he had been given any amount of time to learn some Russian before being sent to this place. 

After they seemed to stay in place and talk for a while, they fell eerily silent. He worried he’d been spotted until a gunshot echoed through the tunnel, and then another. He waited until he heard their footsteps disappear before rounding the corner. 

He found the old man sitting lifelessly, slumped against a blood-splattered wall. It wasn’t the glamorous or victorious end for a fighter, but he could see it had been done with care. He knew that with what the man had been turning into, it was a mercy, if a brutal one.

He walked past the body and then kept moving, following the tracks of the two men’s boots where he could find them, but not before picking up a flashlight—his flashlight—from the ground where JD had dropped it. 

The tunnels turned and branched off in other directions frequently. He had no idea how many tunnels there were, but he assumed they had lost the military in them a while ago. He flicked on the flashlight when the electric lights overhead ran out, and he soon found himself in a dark room. It was hard to tell what exactly it was used for. The walls were lined with shelves, and furniture was haphazardly placed through the room. 

A noise sent him crouching behind a table, blades twitching behind him. He squinted, aiming his flashlight around the area cautiously. He nearly jumped when the beam illuminated JD, crouched down and jammed into a space between a shelf and a corner. He had a finger to his lips in a desperate shushing motion, pointing behind Leon.

He very quickly snatched his scythes back under the jacket. Had JD seen them? Was that what he was pointing to? Or had he been blinded by the flashlight pointed directly in his eyes, and was pointing to something else? Leon wondered if he had really been dumb enough to out himself already. He’d better do some counter-acting, just in case…

He stood up with a sigh. 

“What? There’s nothing there. It’s just me.” He spread his hands dramatically, and then turned around, ready to motion to the nothing…

Except that he found an infected instead, charging at him with a sharp pair of pruners. He was knocked to the ground while he twisted his head away from the gardening tool in a panic. The blades jammed into the ground inches from his cheek. 

“If I wanted a haircut, I would have _asked_ for one,” he said as he kicked the crazed man’s knee, sending him to the ground. As he yanked the pruners out of the floor, he got a good look at the man’s face. Red, bloodshot eyes, grey skin, dark veins creeping up his neck… he knew this look. 

He pulled the gardening tool, ready to strike.

“Don’t kill him! That was my schoolteacher!” JD yelled, voice cracking in panic. 

Leon hesitated. 

“Whoever he was before is gone. This isn’t your teacher anymore.” 

He plunged the blade into the man’s head, ending his writhing as JD yelled, grabbing at his head in frustration. 

“You killed Mr. Chenkov!”

“Did you want me to leave him to kill you? Huh? He didn’t leave me any choice.” 

JD was about to protest when another infected grabbed him from behind and threw him halfway across the room. Before Leon could move to help, he had to quickly block yet another one flanking him, trying to stab him in the face with a kitchen knife. 

He was cornered, trapped at an odd angle with his back against a table. JD would soon be cornered too if he didn’t act fast, but he was just pointing the rifle at the infected with a shaky aim. 

“Shoot it! That’s not a person anymore, shoot, JD!” 

JD was not interested in listening, and was quickly grabbed before he could make up his mind. 

Leon growled and pushed the man attacking him just enough that he could roll to the side. He twisted the man’s arm and snatched the knife from him, then used as much force as he could muster to slam the man’s head into the sharp corner of the table. There was a cracking sound, and the man fell to the floor. 

Leon turned and ran to where JD was struggling, the rifle pinned to him uselessly. 

“Move your head!”

JD barely registered what was going on in his panic, but did as Leon said. Right next to his head, Leon curb-stomped the would-be killer’ face into the floor. He then stomped again, and then stabbed with the kitchen knife just for good measure. 

He was breathing hard as he pulled the knife back up, the zombie coming with it. He could now see some kind of horrible fleshy parasite apparatus sticking out of its mouth. 

Whatever this was, it didn’t look like the T-virus. 

JD scrambled out from under the dead creature, his eyes wide as he tried to catch his breath as well. Leon frowned at him, motioning towards the rifle around his neck. 

“Are you just wearing that for giggles, or are you actually gonna shoot something if it tries to kill you?”

“I’ll… I’ll shoot next time! He just caught me off guard. I didn’t know what was happening, it was pulling something out of its mouth…” 

Leon huffed and left the blade planted in the dead zombie, or rather, if what he suspected was true, the dead Ganado. 

“Do you know the way out of here?” 

JD nodded shakily. 

“It’s this way. There’s a cathedral we use as headquarters, not too far away.” 

“Then let’s get out of here before more show up.” 

For as much as JD kept casually pointing the rifle at Leon, he didn’t protest at all with his instructions. 

The two took the meandering tunnels to a maintenance entrance at the surface, where they crawled out into the morning light, in the middle of a cobblestone plaza. 

Leon furrowed his brows. Something wasn’t right. There were people milling around, but they weren’t just out enjoying the day. They had the same slow, deliberate gait, and quiet muttering that he recognized from the village in Spain. JD seemed to notice it as well. 

“It’s this way… let’s hurry.” 

The two skirted around the edge of the plaza and made it to a grand, impressive gothic cathedral. Or at least, Leon assumed it was gothic. History class was a long time ago. The two moved towards the entrance, leaving the uneasy atmosphere behind. 


	5. Take Me to Church but Not Like That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JD has lots of questions for Leon, and also a new mission.

Leon entered the heavy wooden doors ahead of JD, looking around as he approached the pews ahead. Stained glass windows, intricate carvings, paintings of cherubs and angels above…it was quite a sight after being underground for several hours.

“What did you do to them?” JD demanded.

Leon turned around to find the rifle pointed at him once again. He narrowed his eyes.

“What’s happening to everybody!” 

“Unfortunately, I’d say your pet plaga got loose somewhere.”

“What are you talking about?! What’s a plaga?! How do I know you didn’t have something to do with this?”

He sighed. The man’s panicked expression was starting to make Leon think he really was out of the loop. 

“It’s a parasite, an old one. It enters a host and attaches to the spinal cord, and then, from what I’ve seen, someone else can control it. But it’s pretty much a death sentence for a host with a fully grown plaga.” He had to stop himself from adding more details before he started to look suspicious himself. 

“Then how do you stop it? There must be something we can do!” JD snapped. 

“You can’t. The best you can do is to rip out part of the spinal cord, but that would leave someone paralyzed… at best. Probably dead.”

“You’re lying!”

“If I’m lying, then why did you kill the old man? Did you think he was ever going to recover and still shot him? Huh?”

JD’s face twisted as he tried to reconcile Leon’s words. He looked like he was about to argue more before a voice cut him off from a side room.

“He says true,” announced a heavy accent. 

Leon watched Buddy appear, along with a whole squad of freedom fighters from the other rooms and second floor. They all had their rifles trained right on Leon. He slowly put his hands up. 

“I have more questions for you.” Buddy slowly ambled closer to Leon, stopping a couple of meters away. Leon would have looked down his nose at him if the man weren’t already taller than he was. He huffed.

“Maybe this time you can stop hiding things from your comrades and we’ll get somewhere then?” 

Buddy’s brows furrowed, and he slowly closed the distance between them… before landing a hard right hook into Leon’s head, staggering the DSO agent back a couple of steps. 

Leon decided that maybe poking the lion wasn’t the best idea as he was, once again, zip-tied and then roughly shoved onto a wooden pew. There was definitely going to be a bruise there… So much for getting answers. 

It seemed that whatever questions Buddy had were going to wait until later. Much later. He watched the morning light ever-so-slowly creep along the walls, leaving colorful stained-glass shadow trails. He couldn’t understand anyone to get even a hint of information as they worked around him, discussing plans and checking weapons. One of the freedom fighters sat nearby, watching him at all times. 

As much as he knew he needed to stay awake, he found his head nodding. He slid down in the pew to keep himself steady. The last time he’d gotten any sleep since a quick nap on the plane was during the couple of hours he’d been knocked out by the explosion in the parking garage. Who had set that off, anyway? He guessed it was the freedom fighters, after they discovered Scarecrow. Scarecrow… what a weird codename… why did Leon have to be the tinman anyway? He wasn’t even remotely tin… maybe it was a metaphor for guns… but they weren’t tin either…were his knife arms tin? 

He didn’t even notice his head drooping to the side. He was just going to close his eyes for a minute, anyway. 

* * *

  
  


The loud thump of an ammo can hitting a bench jolted Leon awake. He took a moment to remember where he was and why his hands were tied before awkwardly sitting back up from where he’d slumped down into the corner of the pew. A new freedom fighter had just taken over for the last one, and was sitting down to reload ammo magazines at a leisurely pace. 

The last slivers of evening sunlight were just slipping away through the windows above. Somehow, he didn’t think the unintended sleep made him feel any better. He just wanted to go back to wherever he’d been unconsciously that wasn’t here. His head was throbbing from Buddy’s punch, and his stomach was angrily blaming him for forgetting an entire day of meals. 

Just as the sky began to darken through the windows, he looked up to find JD marching towards him with intent. He said something to the fighter who was on hostage-sitting duty, and the man nodded. JD pulled Leon to his feet roughly and began leading him outside. 

Leon didn’t even complain. He was getting so tired of sitting on a hard wooden pew that he could scream. 

Once outside the back of the church, he was slammed against the wall with JD’s knife digging into his back. 

“He’s gone to get it,” JD said in a hushed voice. 

Leon looked over his shoulder, brows furrowed. 

“The plaga?”

“I don’t know what it’s called,” JD hissed back. “All I know is that it was given to us by the Elders.”

Leon raised his brows.

“Who?”

“The Elders, the ones leading the freedom fighters. They started the revolt and we took up arms to follow.” 

There was a quiet  _ snap _ of a knife through plastic, and Leon’s hands fell to his sides, free of the zip ties once again. He turned around to see JD sliding the knife back into the sheath. The confusion on Leon’s face was met with desperation on JD’s. 

“So what, you inject that stuff into yourselves to control the lickers? Is that right? How compassionate of your Elders…” He stepped to the side, trying to put some distance between him and the guy he’d been far too close to lately while he paced.

“What other options do we have?! Do you see any other countries coming to help us while we’re slaughtered out here? Everyone else ignores us! We need this to—”

“Save it, JD. It’s still not the right answer. The moment you resort to using B.O.W.s, you’re asking for things to go from bad to worse.”

“Then please help us!” 

The desperation in his voice jabbed into Leon a bit, slightly unravelling the persistent knot of anger in his chest. He watched JD lean back against the wall of the church and slide down to the ground, hanging his head.

“If Irina were here, he’d listen to her, but…he doesn’t really listen to anyone else now.”

“Irina?”

“Buddy’s fiancée… Used to be. She was a schoolteacher; they both were, actually. We’d known each other since we were kids. Those bastards… they thought the school was a pro-independence hideout and attacked it. Irina, the kids, all killed.” He glanced up at Leon. “Buddy is fighting today because of it. He’d never even held a gun until then.”

Leon furrowed his brows, flexing his hands as he mulled over his words. 

JD pushed himself to his feet again, turning to Leon resolutely. 

“I’m going to pretend you escaped…you could even punch me if you want to make it look realistic—”

“I’m not punching you.”

“Okay whatever, but in return, you  _ must _ get a hold of it before he does.”

Leon hummed quietly.

“So now you trust me?”

“I don’t know who you are, or who you’re working for, but I know you saved my life in those tunnels, so you do care about people other than yourself. You  _ must _ stop Sasha. Please.”

Sasha. Somehow it was not the name Leon had pictured for the tall, brooding man. 

JD quickly pulled the strap of the rifle over his head, thrusting the gun forward for Leon to take. “You’ll find him in the central marketplace.”

Leon eyed the rifle for a moment before lightly pushing it back. 

“You hang on to that.” He yanked the pistol out of the holster instead, then shoved it under the waistband of his jeans. “As long as you remember to use it.” 

He turned and jogged away from the church, checking around the corner before crossing the street. His head was a mess of questions, with several of them directed at himself. He always managed to delicately skirt around the subject of his own hypocrisy, telling them how bad it was to use B.O.W.s. If he didn’t think about it, then it wasn’t a problem, right?


	6. Hanging Out with Ada

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon finds the one person he can complain to, and does so.

The only way Leon managed to find the central market was by following the signs that thankfully had English underneath the Russian words, and even then, he had no idea which of the bombed-out buildings Buddy might be in. 

With no one around to see him, he slipped his extra arms out from beneath the jacket again. They were getting more annoying to keep tucked away, almost like the parasite itself was getting bored and wanted to do something. He noticed they were twitching slightly, like they had before he had started on the pills. He wondered how long it would take for his regeneration to get back up to speed without his medication—he really had no clue. 

The market’s parking garage seemed to be the only place with lights on deep inside, so he aimed that way. He peeked around every corner, unsure if he would find Buddy, the undead, the military, or something worse. He finally got far enough in that he found a briefcase on the ground, and quickly knelt down to open it. 

It was empty, the foam hollow where a syringe gun would be, now just a shadow telling him that he was too late. It looked like there had been numerous vials in it before, but they were gone too. Whatever Buddy came here to get, he was long gone with it. 

“Looking for someone?”

Leon whirled around, the scythes instinctively swinging around with him in a smooth, deadly motion. He just saw the blur of someone backflipping out of slicing range as he pulled out his pistol and steadied himself. 

The woman he had nearly cut in half stood up from her graceful maneuver, a little smirk on her face. Leon’s eyes widened, and the barrel of his pistol quickly dropped to the floor. 

“Ada?”

She dusted off her business-style tailored suit jacket casually with one hand… and the other hand had a pistol pointed at him. He brought his back up as well.

“I’m glad I remembered those things don’t like me… I thought you got rid of them?” She seemed entirely unbothered by his appearance. 

“They…grew back. Again. What are you doing here?” he asked with a more authoritative voice. 

The last time he had seen her during a mission, she had been flying away on a helicopter with a live virus sample, stolen right out of his hands. The knowing smile she gave him said she was thinking of the exact same event. 

“I was about to ask you the same thing, actually.”

“Did you release the plaga here?”

She chuckled. 

“You know me better than that, Leon. I’m not interested in releasing defective products into the population. I’m here on real business.” She paced as she talked, but kept the pistol pointed at Leon. 

“What are you  _ doing _ here?” he asked again, but she continued without answering.

“You know, if these people attack the capitol with whatever was in that case, it  _ will _ make my job a lot easier…” She folded her arms, pointing the gun away while she thought, but Leon got the message that she hadn’t really been going to shoot him. He lowered his again, and put it back in his waistband. 

“So I’m supposed to believe it was just a coincidence that you appeared here, with an empty case of plaga parasite?”

“Maybe I just wanted to see how you’re doing, hm? Looks like you got into a scuffle.” She motioned to the red-purple bruise forming on his temple. 

He sighed, putting his hands on his hips. 

“Well if you want to know, I’m doing pretty horrible actually.”

Ada raised a brow as he continued.

“I was taken off vacation to be sent here, almost blown apart, tied up, attacked by undead, and then punched in the face. It’s not been a great day, really.” His blades grew increasingly twitchy as his voice rose, so he hooked them over a steel support overhead…to give them something to do. 

“And, this guy wants me to stop his friend from getting the plaga, and wow look, there’s the empty CASE so I guess I’m not doing THAT—”

“Leon.”

“And now YOU’RE here which means you’re probably going to point a gun at me again and steal some big important BIOWEAPON—”

“ _ Leon _ .”

He huffed and looked back to her, breaking from his rant. He was even more twitchy than before, so he sighed and started pulling himself up towards the steel support until he was hanging upside down with his legs over it, arms crossed. Hopefully the arms couldn’t slash anything if he was using them to hold himself steady. 

“What. I’m not allowed to have a bad day? And you’re not helping either.” His hair was now doing all sorts of things with gravity going the wrong way, but he didn’t care.

She stared at him thoughtfully for a few moments, then smiled and walked over closer to him. 

“I just wanted to know… When are we um… going to carry on from where we left off that night?” 

Leon’s face turned a significantly redder shade, and it wasn’t from hanging upside down. 

“Ada… any time but now…” He really wished that he’d been doing something remotely normal when she asked that question, but it was too late.

“You’re  _ angry _ with me, aren’t you?” She stepped even closer, now inches from his face. “It suits you.” 

She gently took his flustered face in her hands, then pressed her lips to his. 

He closed his eyes and brought his hands down to cup her face as well, going with the flow of what Ada had started. 

By the time she finally pulled back and they both caught their breath, Leon’s heart was hammering. He felt like he’d somehow been recharged to full capacity in about thirty seconds. 

She smirked as she let him go and stepped back. 

“Oh by the way, you might not want to… _ hang _ around here too long.” She pulled out her gun again, and aimed it at the sky before pulling the trigger. A grappling hook shot up into the blasted-open roof of the garage, yanking her up with it. “They’re going to purge this town soon, so get a move on!” 

Leon all but faceplanted trying to quickly scramble down from the steel support, but she was long gone by the time he managed to get back on his feet. He stared up at the place where she’d disappeared into the night and huffed. 

“ _ Women. _ ”


	7. Take Me Back to Church but Not Like That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon attempts a Rescue JD Any-Percent speedrun.

Leon’s trip back to the church was fairly uneventful. He was quiet enough to avoid drawing attention, and he hadn’t seen any plaga-infected ganados in a while. That would have seemed odd to him, if he weren’t replaying those few moments with Ada over in his head on a loop. 

The sound of gunshots snapped him out of his thoughts. They were coming from the direction of the church. He broke into a sprint. 

The infected were clustered around the cathedral’s walls when he rounded the corner. The wooden door was closed tightly, probably barred from inside, and they were slamming their fists and crude weapons against it. He’d have to find another way in.

He caught sight of what looked like a maintenance ladder and began climbing the brick wall of the church grounds to get to it.

Zombies below reached for him when they spotted him, groaning and growling with Russian-sounding words sometimes. He managed to leap over their heads and land on the maintenance ladder, heaving himself up. He gained a surprising bit of speed by hooking the knife arms onto the rungs and practically flinging himself up to the next set of rungs. 

When he finally climbed in the high-up window and made it down to the railing of the second floor, he found the previously quiet church in chaos. 

The bodies of freedom fighters were scattered on the floor, across pews. Blood was streaked across the decorative tile floors, but not everyone was dead. A couple of the infected were still there and running to grab the last survivors. Some survivors were in the middle of losing their survivor status already. Up on the altar was, to Leon’s surprise, JD attempting to mow down a small mob with the rifle. He was being quickly overwhelmed, however, trying to pull out a magazine to reload while the undead clung to him. 

Leon vaulted over the railing, scythes out and ready. He slammed a zombie into the ground as he landed forcefully, slicing its head off. The next one turned to attack him, the newest victim in the room, and he sunk a blade deep through its chest and out the back of its spine. He must have impaled the parasite directly, because the Ganado went limp immediately. However, he was now slightly stuck, and had to hold down the corpse with his boot to yank the blade free. 

The next thing to attack him was one of the freedom fighters, but the glazed-over red eyes and grey skin meant this one was no longer looking for anything but Leon’s death. He plunged the blade down into the top of its head, dropping the fighter instantly. 

When he looked up again, JD had been dragged down from the altar and was being held by several infected so that Leon could barely even see him. 

He lunged forward, swinging the blades out as far as he could reach. 

The Ganado’s head and right arm separated from its body as the corpse fell to the ground. The next one holding JD met a similar fate as its head was cleaved from its body. The third was separated from its arms and then dispatched similarly.

By the time the last corpse hit the floor, Leon was panting hard, his hair hanging down in his eyes. The blades were covered in blood and gore, but they weren’t twitching at the moment. He swept the hair out of his eyes and finally looked to JD. 

The look of absolute horror on the man’s blood-splattered face shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. JD crawled back, eyes locked on Leon and his extra arms. 

“You’re… you’re one of them? No!” He began crawling backwards, away from the altar and away from Leon. 

“No, no… I’m… I do have the plaga, but it’s not like them, I promise. I’m in control of this—”

“All those things you said about it, about B.O.W.s… you were this the whole time?!”

“No, I mean yes… Listen, JD, I’m not going to hurt you. I came back to tell you that Buddy got there before I did. I couldn’t—”

JD swore something in Russian and grabbed his head in his hands, sitting a moment. He then pushed himself up to his feet. 

“You lied to us…”

“You tied me to a chair, to be fair…”

“Why did you even help me if you’re—” a violent coughing fit cut off his question. 

Leon furrowed his brows as he kept coughing.

“JD, are you alright?”

“I…I’m fine. I just….” He coughed a bit again and then cleared his throat, standing back up straight and staring resolutely at Leon. “Thank you for helping me, even when you didn’t have to.”

Leon narrowed his eyes. 

“Did one of them infect you?”

The fear that flashed across JD’s face, and the look up at his scythes, answered his question. 

“Hold still.”

JD screamed and began sprinting in the opposite direction. Leon blinked before he realized what he looked like, blood-soaked scythe arms hovering over him, and that JD probably thought he was about to be sliced in half. 

“No, wait! I have something that can—agh!” He just sprinted after JD and grabbed him by the vest. The yelling continued the whole time, and something that was probably Eastern Slav prayers for help. Leon jammed his hand into a small pocket of the vest and pulled out the orange pill bottle, shaking it for emphasis. “Listen—HEY. Stop it. You take these, or you’re going to die. It’s made to suppress the plaga.”

“W…What?”

“Just do what I said!”

The doors to the cathedral’s transept were shoved open loudly, and the two of them looked up. 

Buddy stood in the doorway, eyes wide. JD’s face lit up.

“Buddy! You’re still human!” He broke out into a coughing fit again, so Leon shoved the pills back into the vest pocket and let him go. 

Buddy pointed his gun at Leon, a feral snarl crossing his face. 

“You!” He screamed. “What did you do to him?! What are you?!”

Leon put his hands up defensively. 

“Listen, he needs to take those pills or he’s going to end up just like one of those things.”

“Lies! Where is righteous talk of B.O.W.s now?! You condemn us, and you are no different!”

“Hey, I didn’t ask for this. It was forced on me—”

“But it helps you! You use it! You are no different from us!”

JD tried to interject, but was quickly shushed by his comrade. 

“And what is this!” He motioned to the carnage around them, the bodies of his freedom fighters scattered all over the room. “You are worse than us! You have power, and you did nothing to stop this!”

Leon’s arms twitched and the blades flicked menacingly at the aggression, so he took a few steps back. 

“I know what this looks like, but you have to trust me. Just get him to take four of those pills every hour and he might survive—”

“How do we know what they are! Could be cyanide pills for all we know! You, you are our enemy. Because of you, JD is going to…” he swore loudly and pulled the sights of the gun into place, directly at Leon. 

Before he could fire a shot however, the entire church shook. The purge Ada had talked about must have begun. Another boom, and the ceiling of the cathedral began to crack and drop heavy debris over their heads, forcing them all to start running for cover. 

“You are dead, American!” came Buddy’s voice though the gathering dust, and then he ran through the door he’d appeared from with JD in tow. Leon swore and fled the debris. So far, he wasn’t doing very well on completing anything he set out to do on this mission. 


	8. Sasha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buddy prepares for the biggest, and possibly last, fight of his life.

Sasha sat on an uncomfortable wood chair in the cramped attic of a small house belonging to some of the last people he trusted. Really, they were just acquaintances he had met through the freedom fighters. Anyone he knew better than them was dead already. 

Except JD. He wondered how long that would remain true. 

The stubby blonde man sat on a pallet of blankets on the floor, provided by the acquaintances downstairs. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, and his face buried in his arms, which were crossed on top of them. He shook frequently and coughed violently, but he was still human. For now. 

Against his better judgement, Sasha had agreed for him to try the pills the American monster had given him. The dread he felt still remained, even if JD had, so far, lasted longer than any of the others he’d seen once infected. 

“How long has it been?” JD asked.

Sasha looked up from his pondering. 

“Since the last dose? About an hour. How do you feel?”

JD shook his head. 

“Bad. But you don’t have to sit here and watch me. You have things to do. I don’t want to cause any more trouble.”

Sasha furrowed his brows. He wanted desperately to blame the American for what happened, but where had he himself been during the attack? He tried not to think about it. He had enough guilt on his mind, and didn’t need to add more. 

“You aren’t any trouble, JD. Just… stay here, keep taking the medicine. I’m going to finalize plans for the attack.”

JD looked up as Sasha stood. 

“Buddy… you’re still going ahead with it?” 

The tall man had a hollow look in his eyes. 

“We have no other choice. The people here will take care of you… until I get back.” 

The heavy, uneasy question of whether either of them would be alive in 24 hours hung like a thick fog in the room. 

JD reached over to the body armor that was laying on the floor next to him. He pulled out the flask and took a swig, then closed it and held it out to Sasha. 

“You’ll need this more than me, I think. At least, the hero has one a lot in the movies… it’s for good luck. Remember that you’re the hero, eh?” 

Sasha hesitantly took the flask with an awkward nod. He allowed a small, forced smile back, and nodded.

“The hero, huh… I’ll try. Thank you.”

He would have said more, but he didn’t trust his shaky voice. He headed for the attic ladder, eyes stinging. 

He had one last attack to prepare for. 

* * *

  
  


Everything was in place, or as much in place as it was going to get. Three trucks full of lickers in their capsules, all injected with the slave parasite, and a much-dwindled force of soldiers were all Buddy had. Without the B.O.W.s, he would have only had a single squadron of fighters to work with. 

Now, he had the injection gun with the master parasite pressed against his arm. He knew what pulling the trigger meant—a time-delayed death sentence. He also knew it was his only option now. 

He pulled the trigger with a  _ pop  _ and grimaced.

Once he had the injection, things began moving. He got into the back of a truck, sliding past containers of the teeth and claws and meat he was going to be commanding soon. He tucked himself against the farthest wall from the truck’s opening. He needed to stay alive long enough to get the lickers inside, so he had to stay hidden away for now. The other fighters got into position, either driving the trucks or heading towards the other locations to hide, ready to jump into the fray. 

He took a drink from the flask, then stared at it for a few moments.  _ For good luck _ . He needed all of that he could get. 

Already, Buddy could feel something changing. He started to gain a sense of the things in the capsules. He could somehow feel them moving, thinking. He even got a sense of how cramped they were in their containers. But most of all, he could sense that they were  _ ready, _ for whatever he told them to do. 

The trucks slowly headed into position, towards the heavily guarded front gate of the capitol. He would have been anxious if he weren’t already riding a wave of despair. As the trucks stopped, however, a knock from the driver signaled that it was time. His heart jumped and he quickly started pushing the buttons on the capsules that popped the lids off. 

He watched one of the monsters crawl out of the cramped little space and search its surroundings. It was horrible to look at, like a skinless human with its joints twisted to the wrong angles and its brain hanging out for the world to see, but it was  _ his _ monstrosity. He could feel it. 

_ Go, kill them. _

The monster didn’t hesitate for a moment. It rocketed out the back of the truck, slamming the doors open. 

He felt the excitement it radiated while racing towards the nearest soldier, and he quickly released the others. They scrambled to join it with the same excitement. Gunfire and screams of Eastern Slav soldiers soon filled the area, along with the war cries of the freedom fighters and snarling of lickers. 

They had an incredible brutality, with which they tore apart one victim and then searched for the next like a machine. It gave him the feeling that he finally had the power in his hands to do to these people what they had done to him, to his family, to his friends. To JD. To Irina. 

He snarled, eyes washed a deep blood-red, and pushed the monsters forward in a tidal wave of carnage. 

_ Leave none of them alive, _ he commanded. 

The monsters were only too happy to oblige. 


	9. Into the Lion's Den

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon follows Buddy's path of destruction, hoping to get to the bottom of the B.O.W.'s origin.

Ada’s passing comment about attacking the capitol gave Leon a hint where Buddy might be. He had spent the rest of the night camped out in a half-destroyed corner store, where at least he had found food and water at last. The little hotel room with the bare necessities looked more like a Four Seasons resort the longer he was away from it. 

Now that he was slightly better off than before, he headed towards the capitol cautiously. The sun lit up a bright blue sky, and it would otherwise have been a beautiful day. However, instead of morning birdsong, he heard the rapid pops of automatic rifles echoing far ahead. Ada had been right. 

With only a single pistol and two bladed arms that made him a target for  _ everyone  _ involved _ , _ he certainly didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire of the attack, and thus took his time heading towards the distant chaos. 

When he finally approached the front gate of the capitol building, he was reassured that he’d made the right decision by waiting. Three of the honey-bee logo trucks were parked in front of it, the back doors torn open from the inside. Clusters of empty bioweapon capsules were visible between the twisted metal. 

His boots were tracking blood before he even reached the trucks. Corpses were strewn everywhere, a mix of the military, freedom fighters, and some of the lickers. The wounds to the soldiers looked the worst—the work of teeth and massive claws powered by solid muscle. The quiet of all the death was broken by the eerie sound of their radios still sounding off, with panicked voices yelling updates in Russian. 

He pushed forward through the broken barricades and gate, on to the capitol building. It was just as dead inside as the front gate, with still more bodies and blood splatters. The trail of carnage was surprisingly hard to follow, as it seemed to branch out through every corridor and room. He just had to guess which way Buddy was headed specifically. 

A long, bloody, windowed hallway led to a fancy-looking door. He started down it, wondering if he was going to find anyone alive here or just more death. 

Two small red drips splattered onto the floor in front of him and he froze, pistol ready. He looked up to find two of the monsters latched to the ceiling, and stepped back just as they dropped to the ground. 

His heart raced. 

Leon had been here before. He knew how to get past this, or at least he hoped.

The two lickers growled and gurgled as they walked on either side of him. They didn’t seem like the guided-missile sort of creature he had been hit with in the parking garage, so maybe if they couldn’t sense him, the one controlling them couldn’t either. He held his breath to stay as silent as possible, letting them pass. 

Once they had crawled by and were more busy swatting at each other, he slowly started towards the door again, rolling his steps quietly. He was nearly there when a hand latched onto his ankle. He looked down in alarm to find a half-dead solder, pleading something to him with a loud whine. The monsters immediately snarled their alarm. 

“I’m really sorry, but that’s the worst thing you could have done right now,” Leon said quickly, yanking his foot free and sprinting for the door. It was too late to try to stay silent, and far too late for the pleading soldier. He heard the lickers rapidly scuttling to his location, and then the sickening noise of the soldier being dispatched. 

Leon just prayed the door was unlocked as he grabbed the handle, and it was! He pushed the door open, only to immediately backpedal as he was suddenly looking into an enormous, abyssal elevator shaft. 

His bladed arms shot out to the sides and caught the doorframe, letting him swing backwards and slam into the side of the empty shaft. A snarl made him duck, only to see a licker go sailing over his head and into the abyss with a panicking, animalistic yell. It was a while before he heard the distant thump. 

He had a feeling that whatever secrets were being hidden in this place would be at the bottom of this elevator shaft. Ada had mentioned she had a job to do here, and he was painfully aware that governments were not above using B.O.W.s themselves. Something didn’t seem right about the struggling freedom fighters managing to get access to the power to cause the destruction he had seen. 

The climb down was going to be arduous, but maybe at the bottom of it, he would finally get to the bottom of his mission here as well.

It took quite a while, as he expected, and the deeper down he went, the more suspicious he grew of the place. When he finally reached a maintenance door and got into a hallway, he followed it to a hangar-type door. Beyond it was an enormous, warehouse-sized room filled with shipping containers and equipment. A nuclear shelter was a reasonable thing to have beneath presidential lodging; he understood that. But this? This was not normal. 

A huge cylindrical structure that stretched all the way to the ceiling caught his attention. There was a suspicious green glow coming from the entryway of it, and he moved to investigate. At the sound of clicking heels, however, he quickly slunk inside and into hiding. 

None other than Ada Wong strolled into the circular room, eyeing the computer consoles in the middle of it. 

“So you missed me, huh?”

Ada whipped around and just smiled at him. 

“In your dreams, crab legs.” she answered casually, and continued walking inside. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

He smirked and pushed away from the wall to walk along with her, studying the walls and walls of glowing green capsules. He had thought they were screens at first, some giant display. Upon closer inspection, they were actually hexagonal capsules filled with liquid…and something else. 

“Uh huh. It’s like a beehive… sort of. If you had giant green bees.” 

Ada gave him an unamused look, then leaned down to peer at a capsule. 

“Have you looked inside one of these?” 

Leon stepped up, and she moved aside to let him see as well—a good distance, still not trusting his extra additions. 

“It’s the plaga.”

She was right. He had seen the same thing here already. It wasn’t like anything he had seen in Spain, but then, he had never seen whatever parasite Saddler and his closest cronies had. He watched Ada point out one specifically. 

“Look, this one kinda looks like you,” she said with a mischievous smile. 

It was Leon’s turn to look unimpressed. 

“The freedom fighters told me that their Elders gave them the plaga… but if they’re supposed to be fighting against the government, what are they doing getting the parasites from them?”

“That’s a good question, isn’t it?” She started working at the computer console in the center, flying through screens like she knew what she was doing…and she probably did. “I’m sure they could have found the worker parasites easily enough; they’ve been cultivated before. But this is the first time anyone has ever cultured the dominant members of the species… that I’ve heard of anyway.” She looked to Leon. “And I hear everything.”

He nodded in thought and watched her go back to doing something with progress bars on the screen, before it finally dawned on him what she was in the middle of. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m working, don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, I’m worried… I hate being right sometimes—”

“ENOUGH.” 

An unfamiliar woman’s voice rang through the room, and Eastern Slav heavy soldiers poured in to surround the two. 

Leon should have immediately hidden his scythes, but his instinctual reaction was to ready them to fight instead. He sighed. Too late to hide them now. He lowered the blades and put his hands up, and Ada did the same…minus the blades. 

A thin, sharp-featured woman with a blonde bob stepped out from behind the soldiers, a large man in a suit following close behind. 

“So this is what you were looking for,” she sneered in a thick accent, looking at Ada. “Well, are you satisfied?”

Leon raised a brow, glancing at Ada as well. 

“Yes! Thank you  _ very _ much,” she replied. 

Leon still looked lost as the woman turned to him. 

“Who is he?” 

“He’s an American agent,” Ada answered immediately, giving him a little smile as he glared at her. 

“Well now that we got  _ that _ out of the way.”

“An American… my next question is  _ what _ is he?”

Leon answered this time. 

“According to her, I’m a highly motivated crab.”

“You better watch out, pardner,” Ada warned with a sudden, overbearing deep south accent. “That ole broad’s got a bite worse’n her bark. Keep yer eyes on that one.”

Leon’s face twisted up in confusion as he looked back to her. 

“Say what?”

Instead of answering, she twisted around and slammed her hand on a button. The whole room went dark, and an alarm started blaring. 

He saw his opportunity and seized it. 

His blades unfolded to their full length, and a quick slash tore one of the heavy soldiers nearly in half. Gunfire and chaos erupted through the room. 

The soldiers had, unfortunately, angled themselves into an even circle around Leon and Ada when they filed in. Now that they were firing blindly at any movement in the dark, they ended up cutting down a few of their own men before one of them finally yelled out and they stopped shooting. The lights flicked back on, and they looked around in confusion. The two Americans had disappeared. 

“Don’t move.”

They turned to find Leon with a blade against the blonde’s neck, and his pistol pointed at her back. “Stay back and I won’t hurt her,” he warned. 

“Do you have any idea who you are threatening?” she asked with a mischievous tone. 

“Let me guess… you’re the beekeeper?”

“The beekeeper?”

“The person who’s been handing out the plaga, dealing to the freedom fighters and pretending you’re on the government’s side. Am I right?”

She huffed. 

“Just as I thought, you haven’t a clue.” She turned slightly to look at him. “I am Svetlana Belikova, the president of the Eastern Slav Republic.” 


	10. The Noise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Svetlana proves to be a less-than-stellar president, while Leon and Buddy make a surprising connection.

For a brief moment, fear shot through Leon’s chest. He was sitting here with his gun pointed at the actual leader of the country he was standing in? He started rushing back through the events leading to this moment in self-doubt. Had he made a mistake? What if she hadn’t known about all this either, and they had all just conveniently found it at once? 

She whipped around, slamming the gun out of his hands. He barely had time to react, narrowly avoiding an elbow to the face. He tried to regain control of her again, but every attempt was met with an expertly placed jab or a twist away from his grip. By the time he even thought to get the bladed arms involved, he had to leap backwards to avoid a high-heeled kick to the face instead. 

He rolled back to his feet just to find his pistol now pointed back at him by Svetlana. 

“So that’s what Ada’s yeehaw nonsense meant…”

“That monster is an enemy to this country. Kill him!” 

He sprinted for cover as a hail of bullets started up again, diving behind a steel container. He’d gotten himself into a tight spot alright, uncovering a government-level B.O.W. plot and then threatening the president of a small European country. And who knew what Ada had gotten away with while they were going back and forth? She had conveniently disappeared. 

The attention of the soldiers suddenly switched off of Leon, however. A buzzer sounded, and he peeked around the side of his cover to see what was going on. The soldiers ran off to surround an enormous metal door that seemed to go to a cargo lift. Leon watched worriedly as the buzzer sounded again, signaling that the lift had gotten to their level. 

An ear-splitting ringing made Leon scramble to cover his ears. His scythes whipped erratically, digging into the containers around him and scratching along the concrete floor. From the glimpses he caught of the soldiers between hunkering down in panic, they didn’t seem to be affected at all by the noise. Could they not hear it?

It was like someone getting feedback on a loudspeaker, if the loudspeaker were in the middle of his brain. The noise slowly began to fade, or perhaps something in him started adjusting to it. He still felt…off, like something wasn’t right inside. 

The door to the lift began to pull up, and he heard another hail of gunfire followed by the whines of a licker being destroyed at the same time. He needed to move. If the fighters had made their way here, he was in a very bad spot. More gunfire sounded, and then the screams of soldiers meant that the monsters were inside. 

Leon took off running into the sea of shipping containers, but the strange noise remained in the back of his head. Motion caught his attention on a catwalk, and he stopped to look up. 

There stood Buddy, flanked by two snarling monsters. His blood-red eyes were unfocused, staring at nothing. He didn’t even seem to notice Leon as he climbed up on top of a shipping container. 

The ringing faded away, and Buddy finally looked over at Leon with a glare. One of the lickers at his side began climbing the railing, 

“You used it?” Leon questioned, accusingly.

Buddy sneered. He had the expression of a man who had finally snapped. 

“ _ Get him,” _ he commanded. 

The monster flew from the railing, hitting Leon’s chest like a missile and sending them both tumbling off of the container. He hit the ground hard on his back, made more uncomfortable by his bladed arms being pinned beneath him awkwardly, crossed over each other. Buddy ran off while Leon was otherwise occupied. 

The monster’s snarl, however, was met with a snarl right back from Leon. He grabbed the licker’s jaws with both hands, doing his best to keep the snapping teeth from latching onto his face. Instead of fear, he felt absolutely incensed. He could faintly hear that noise in the background of his brain again, too. 

His arms trembled as he tried to hold the licker back, but it wasn’t because they were about to give out. He felt more powerful than he had since arriving here. No, it wasn’t weakness, it was something else.

The licker, realizing it couldn’t bite him, pulled back its deadly claws, deciding it would just take his whole face off that way instead. 

He yelled through clenched teeth as he felt his forearms tear open. 

Two new blades folded out of his arms and sunk deep into the licker’s exposed brain. The points of the spiked blades protruded from the other side, into the monster’s gaping mouth cavity. It went limp as he pulled the blades out, flopping down onto him and trailing blood. 

Leon grunted and pushed the deadly pile of monster off of him, wiggling out from under it and freeing his scythes again. He looked down at the new, twitching blades, his arms already starting to slowly heal over where they had emerged, beneath the torn fabric of his jacket.

Those two hadn’t managed to grow back once he had started the medication, so he must not have had any of it left in his system now. Speaking of the medication…

He leaned back against a cargo container, catching his breath. 

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop him.” 

He wondered if JD was alive or dead, if he had taken the pills, or if they had even worked if he did. He didn’t think Buddy would answer if he asked. 

Leon shook his head, trying to make the noise and the strange feeling go away. He still wasn’t sure who was even the villain here, but he figured the guy with the army of B.O.W.s might be a good guess. 

He caught sight of Buddy jumping down from the catwalk across the warehouse, and scrambled up on top of the shipping containers to chase him down. Lickers began to fly towards Leon, scuttling after him as fast as they could. He had to dodge them several times, but managed to cut them down, albeit with a bit of difficulty. They were fast, and he was only barely able to match the speed. 

He lost sight of Buddy as he sprinted, but then noticed the licker ahead had stopped and turned a different direction. He ran after it. When he caught up to it, he finally found Svetlana again—behind bulletproof glass with her secretary, sneering back at an enraged Buddy. Lickers clawed at the glass, but made no progress in getting through, and Buddy slammed his fists against it.

Leon hopped down, picking up the rifle of one of the downed soldiers at his feet. He pointed it at Buddy hesitantly, who was shouting something at the president in Russian. 

Svetlana's gaze flicked to Leon before returning to Buddy. 

“What will you gain by killing me?” she asked, in English this time. “Have you thought this through? What would your elders think?”

“Elders would be glad to see you dead!” he yelled back. 

“Are you so sure?” She said with a smirk. “Would they kill the one who graciously gave them the plaga you’re using now?” 

Buddy’s face, reflected in the glass, twisted in anger and confusion. He yelled something back that Leon couldn’t understand, then broke into a pained coughing fit, sliding down the glass and dropping to his knees.

“Oh, you should believe me. The Elders have been on my side for a while, except for Ataman. The promise of joining the wealthy instead of living in the mire with the rest of you must have been very enticing.”

Leon slowly moved the barrel of the rifle away from Buddy and over to Svetlana. Maybe he’d be okay taking the flak for killing this president in particular. 

“The plaga did its job well of weakening your numbers, removing fifty of you for every one that got a master parasite, and you never even questioned how it spread…”

Buddy yelled in white hot rage, and Leon was forced to cover his ears as the noise exploded into his head again. He yelled, trying to make it stop. Now, however, it was more than just a ringing. It was a command, repeating over and over. 

**_KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER_ **

__ It was Buddy’s voice, as clear as day, but it somehow wasn’t in Russian or English. It was just a command that he understood. It took every ounce of control he had to keep from running to the glass and trying to get through to Svetlana. 

Leon and Buddy both looked up at each other with sudden recognition, finally registering that they were, unfortunately, now connected in a very annoying way.


	11. The Tyrants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon and Buddy team up to face a much bigger problem than each other.

“You… hear me? Like they do?” Buddy questioned, staring at Leon. The lickers he had summoned were scuttling rapidly towards Svetlana, but quickly changed course when an enormous cylindrical capsule rose out of the floor. 

Leon turned just in time to see Svetlana smirk and disappear to safety through an exit behind the glass. Buddy yelled at her, but there was nothing he could do. It looked like she would be making a clean escape, leaving them in the middle of her mess. 

The capsule behind them broke apart, and the hissing steam revealed a massive figure. Leon’s eyes widened. He knew exactly what he was looking at, while Buddy just looked very concerned. 

It was a tyrant, grey-skinned and clad in heavy leather and metal gear. It was more than twice the size he’d dealt with in the past. It wasn’t the barely intelligent, cobbled-together “gigantes” he had run into in Spain, either. This was a true  _ tyrant, _ and would be nearly impossible to kill on his own. There were no mysterious rocket launchers laying around here. 

He and Buddy exchanged a look before running in two separate directions. Over the stacks of shipping containers, he could see lickers flinging themselves at the tyrant, only to be killed with a single hand closing around their head, or flung halfway across the warehouse. A second capsule rose up from the floor. Great, now there were two of them. 

The tyrants began slowly hunting down the two of them with a heavy, deliberate gait. Their white eyes searched in an almost robotic way. 

Leon was spotted. One of them lurched forward and, to his surprise, broke into a run. The ground shook with each step, and he narrowly avoided the swing of a fist by ducking under it and scrambling to safety on the other side. He was full on sprinting now, digging his blades into containers like a handbrake to swing around corners as quickly as possible. 

With enough distance now, he used the bladed arms to propel himself up the side of a stack of containers, landing neatly on top. He then felt the whole thing jolt beneath him, throwing him off balance so that he nearly stumbled right off. 

The tyrant had punched the container hard enough to leave an enormous dent. It grabbed the corner and began yanking it right off the stack. Leon fired his newfound rifle at it. As he’d expected, it didn’t seem remotely injured, but just put its hand up to keep the bullets out of his face. It just gave him enough time to hop to another stack and keep running. 

He caught sight of Buddy below, who didn’t seem to be doing as well. The man clutched his chest as he ran, limping along. He would have been grabbed by now if it weren’t for the lickers he threw at the thing stomping after him to buy time. 

Leon had managed to put several lanes of containers between him and his pursuer, but Buddy’s was right behind him now. All it would take was one swing to end him. 

He sprinted along the metal roof of the containers at full speed, letting the rifle hang loose around his neck. He didn’t need it for the idiotic thing he was about to do. 

He reached the end of his little runway and made a full-commitment flying leap… right onto the tyrant’s back. He sunk the biggest blades right into its neck and then yelled at Buddy. 

“RUN!” 

Buddy looked up in confusion, but he didn’t question. He limped quickly towards the cargo lift while Leon twisted and ducked, narrowly avoiding the tyrant’s hands trying to grab him. He had just managed to release a blade, ready to jump down, when one of the massive pale hands grabbed the arm instead. 

He sensed he was about to have a bad time, and was soon proven right. The tyrant pulled on the arm and used it to hurl the nuisance as far as it could. 

Leon slammed into the top of a container and bounced before he rolled right off the edge of it, hitting the concrete floor and finally stopping. He let out a very un-action-hero-like whine as he slowly pushed himself back to his feet. He looked up to find Buddy staring at him, one hand on the lift button. The huge metal door began to slowly open. He looked back at the approaching Tyrants before motioning for Leon to hurry up. 

Leon huffed and shakily hurried to follow the man into the lift, then slam on the button to go up. The doors closed just before the tyrant could reach it, and the lift began to rise. The two men stood there panting, trying to catch their breath. 

Buddy looked at Leon suspiciously. The American was scraped and banged up significantly, but anywhere that had an open wound was slowly starting to reseal itself with little red tendrils, pulling the skin back together. 

“Should have…gotten one like you have,” he said between coughs. Leon cocked his head with a little laugh. 

“I don’t think they make em like this anymore. Old model.”

“Why do you help me, American?”

“It’s… Leon, actually… but it’s because you’re the only one left who can tell the world what happened here. And, it sounds like you got screwed out of a fair fight from the start.”

Buddy huffed. 

“Only took that to…” he took a moment to find the right English word. “…to change your mind?”

“There… was more. JD did most of the legwork there.” 

Buddy’s gaze fell to the floor at the mention of JD. Leon furrowed his brows. He could figure out what that look meant easy enough. 

“I’m sorry…”

“We do not speak of it now.”

Leon obliged, and an uneasy silence fell over them for the rest of the ride up the lift. At the top, they made their way out of the presidential palace and into the spacious courtyard out front. With the tyrants down below and most of the surrounding military dead, they might be home free.

They skid to a stop when one of said tyrants stepped out of a building, dropping a dead freedom fighter beside it like a piece of trash.. Buddy’s face twisted in anger, but he seemed weaker than before. Leon grabbed his arm and pulled him along, running towards cover. 

“I’ll try to draw it off, and you can make a break for the gate,” he explained while running. 

“And go where? There is nothing for me anymore. I will finish this while I can.” 

Leon glanced at him, and just nodded at the look of determination. 

“Then I’ll distract him, and you do your thing.”

Buddy nodded, then broke away to hide behind a truck while Leon ran out into the tyrant’s view again. He fired the rifle at it, shots pinging off the leather and metal. It turned, frowning, and began stomping towards him. Or had it always been frowning? He couldn’t tell. 

He scrambled up a decorative light post and perched on top of it, just out of the monster’s reach.

“Hey egghead! What are you gonna do now?”

The answer was apparently grabbing the light post with both hands and snapping it free of its supports. Leon flailed his arms before jumping forward and twisting around, raking his blades down the tyrant’s back to slow himself into a soft landing. He then turned and sprinted out of grabbing range. He could feel the rush of air behind him, a near miss from the tyrant. 

He ran past Buddy, who was standing resolutely in the middle of the courtyard. A herd of lickers had gathered around him again, ready to fight. Leon jerked his head as the interference started up in his head again. It tried to tug him back towards the fight, but he needed to find something to bring down the bigger monster. 

There were military vehicles around, maybe he could search those--

**_The fuel truck, Leon._ **

He jolted and grabbed at his head before turning around. Buddy was still staring straight ahead, concentrating on his licker army. 

**_THE FUEL TRUCK, NOW._ **

Leon growled and started running back to see what on earth Buddy was yelling straight into his brain about. He finally saw a licker sprinting straight for a gasoline tanker that had been abandoned in the parking lot, probably to refuel the military trucks laying around. But his shots likely wouldn’t be able to penetrate a steel hull…

The licker hopped up onto the tanker, only to be immediately smashed into it by the tyrant. It tore a hole straight through the metal, sending fuel pouring and splashing out over the tyrant. 

Leon pulled the rifle up quickly. 

“Nice work, pal.” 

He held down the trigger, and the last of the rounds in the rifle fired off in a quick volley. He ducked down as the tanker went up in a window-shattering blast. A plume of fire and dirty black smoke rose up into the sky, while a wide radius around the truck remained on fire. 

He turned to give a thumbs-up to Buddy, but found the man down on one knee, coughing and wheezing. He tossed the empty rifle and moved towards him, only to almost get run over by a licker that was crawling full speed towards the fire. Something burst out of the flames and swatted the licker away with enough force that Leon heard a crunch. 

The tyrant was still very much alive, and it had mutated to an even more unreasonable level of muscled bulk and armored skin. The leather gear it wore had been discarded, giving him a very clear view of what he was dealing with now. 

“Get out of there!” he yelled. Buddy shakily got back to his feet, but he wasn’t moving fast enough. Leon ran towards the super tyrant, trying to keep its attention off of Buddy long enough for him to run, and come up with another plan. 

The massive monster was faster now, but maybe he could still dodge it. It pulled back to swing. He was ready to do the same dance again. 

However, the super tyrant was not. 

The punch never came, and before Leon could register what happened, he was flying backwards through the air from a direct kick to his center. He felt like a cannonball had hit him directly in the gut. 

He slammed back-first into a concrete pillar before landing in a heap on the ground, stunned and gasping for air. He couldn’t do more than watch as the super tyrant approached him at a slow, steady pace. He had no idea how many things had just been broken, but it felt like everything. Even his regeneration would have a hard time with that much damage at once. His scythe arms and the smaller blades on his forearms twitched erratically. Maybe the plaga had been stunned too…He groaned and began trying to push up onto his elbows.

The tyrant stooped down and grabbed him roughly before he could get further, squeezing tightly and slamming him against the pillar again. The scythe arms seemed to finally remember they could move and reacted on their own, whipping at the thick-skinned arm holding Leon. With one swift move, however, the tyrant gathered both of the arms into one hand. 

Leon’s eyes widened. That was not good. 

He was jolted as the arms were yanked straight up, separating from him at the lowest joint with a sickening squelch. The pained, strangled yell he let out echoed through the courtyard. 

The tyrant tossed the limp, bug-like arms to the side, while Leon was nearly hyperventilating. He couldn’t even bring himself to use the small blades he had left for the blinding pain. He just wished in vain that he could be anywhere else as the monster pulled back a heavy fist, ready to end him. 

A roar caught its attention just before it could, and a licker suddenly latched onto the tyrant’s face, followed by another, and another. Leon was quickly dropped as the lickers swarmed, clawing at the tyrant’s face, neck, chest—anything they could. He stumbled away from the chaos, trailing blood, before just collapsing to his hands and knees. 

**_GET UP AND FIGHT._ **

“Buddy, come on…”

**_IT’S NOT OVER YET, KEEP FIGHTING._ **

Leon winced as he looked around, but he couldn’t see the man anywhere. A dead licker landed a little ways past him, the tyrant already starting to tear through the small swarm. 

**_JUST HOLD HIM STILL FOR A FEW SECONDS._ **

**_YOU’RE ALMOST DONE._ **

**_PLEASE._ **

Leon scrunched his eyes closed and grit his teeth. He turned back to the fight behind him, shaking. One licker was still latched on, while the other’s throat was being crushed. He unsteadily pushed back to his feet and ran forward, arm-blades extended. 

He slid to a stop at the tyrant’s leg and wrapped his blades around its knee. He pulled both blades hard, slicing around the circumference of the monster’s leg in a crevice between the toughened skin, down to the bone.

There was an audible  _ SNAP _ . The tyrant roared as its knee buckled beneath it. 

Leon barely moved out of the way to avoid being pinned. It snatched the licker off of its face and then grabbed Leon again, holding an assailant in each hand. It squeezed the licker with a sickening crunch, letting it fall limp. Then it turned to Leon and began to do the same, furrowing its brows with a grimace, teeth bared. 

And then, the expression disappeared. Its whole head, in fact, disappeared, in a high-speed red splatter. A percussive boom followed a heartbeat after, and Leon fell to the ground as the body went limp, dropping him and the unfortunate licker. 

Leon looked up, holding his aching chest. At the far end of the courtyard, a cloud of smoke cleared in the wind, revealing an Eastern Slav tank. The barrel was aimed right where the tyrant’s head had been, and Buddy crawled up out of the gunner seat. 

Leon slowly made his way over to the tank as Buddy climbed out.

“That was… a good shot. Real good shot.”

“Thank you,” he said with a little smirk. 

“Have you ever piloted a tank before?”

“No. First time.”

“…a really, really good shot.” Leon looked around, starting to stand up a bit straighter as his insides slowly put themselves back together. The bloody, torn stumps of his extra arms were taking much longer to regrow, however. They had closed enough to stop bleeding, but were still useless for fighting. “Come on, let’s get out of here while we can. Drinks are on me.”

“Good, those were the last of my B.O.W.s.”

Buddy snickered, then broke into coughing again and stumbled. Leon quickly pulled the man’s arm around his shoulders and they started across the courtyard together. 

Heavy footsteps behind them made their blood run cold, however. They turned to find the second tyrant, now a second super tyrant, locked onto them and stalking closer. 

“Come on Buddy, a little faster.”

Buddy moved faster, but the effort was starting to wear on both of them. He clutched his chest, growling. 

They hobbled to the fountain at the center of the courtyard, where Leon gently set Buddy down against the low wall. Their chances of reaching the gate had dropped to something beyond slim now. He turned to face the oncoming monster, breathing hard. He extended the only weapons he had left, the two small blades on his forearms, and got into a ready stance. 

If he had to go down here, he would go down swinging. 

The tyrant’s steps were slow, methodical, but it soon began to pick up pace. It lurched forward until it was in a full-on sprint, headed straight for them. 

Leon took a deep breath as Buddy laid his head back on the fountain. 

The thudding steps became louder and closer, shaking the ground. The tyrant was aiming to end them this time. 

It couldn’t be bothered to be distracted by the faint jet whine off to its left, but Leon could. His eyes widened, and he pulled Buddy to the other side of the fountain just as a barrage of cannon fire obliterated the ground beside them. He and Buddy both clamped their hands over their ears as a jet roared past overhead. 

He looked back up through the clearing smoke, looking for the tyrant. 

All he found was what was left—the bare humanoid frame, but with so many holes blasted through it that it just fell apart, and crumbled to the ground in a gory pile. 

Leon looked up. The jet didn’t look like any American jet he knew, maybe it was the SU-25… A moment later, it was joined by the familiar shape of an F-22. 

It finally dawned on him that it wasn’t the Eastern Slav military up there, but his own, and apparently Russia’s as well. He just sort of fell back against the fountain and slid down next to the wheezing Buddy. 

“Is it over?” 

Leon huffed. 

“I guess it is.”

He raised a hand over his head, and slowly extended a middle finger to the sky. After a moment he changed it to a thumbs-up. Buddy furrowed his brows. 

“I thought that was good thing?”

“It is. This is for everything else.” 


	12. The Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon and Buddy get to safety, but the path forward is difficult to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Mention of suicide/mercy killing

Leon and Buddy didn’t wait around to see if any more tyrants showed up. They escaped the courtyard and kept moving, though Leon was doing most of the lifting, supporting the weight of the other. The city was slowly coming alive with the sound of gunfire, shouting, and vehicles around them. Buddy pointed down a road, and they moved into a quieter part of the city. 

Leon set him down on a low concrete stairway and then leaned back on a railing across from him, letting out a heavy breath. The sun sunk lower in the sky while they sat, turning the sky a reddish pink. 

“Did you know…military was coming?” Buddy asked through the occasional cough, still holding his chest. 

“No. The last I heard, they were pulling out of the fight. I haven’t exactly been updated.” He unzipped his tattered, blood-crusted jacket and tied it around his waist. The extra limbs on his back were longer now, like a smaller, thinner version of what they had been before, except the exoskeleton hadn’t hardened yet. They were still pretty useless at the moment.

“Even when they come to help, they do not bother to tell us. Now, I wonder how many freedom fighters are left to see it.” 

Buddy reached into a pocket in his jacket. He pulled out a familiar flask and took a drink, then offered it to Leon. He raised a brow as he accepted it—his  _ own _ flask, not that he was going to say anything about it. 

When he took a swig, he reeled back slightly at the taste.

“This is vodka.”

“It was not always vodka?”

“It was whiskey…”

Buddy huffed as Leon handed the flask back.

“JD…” He furrowed his brows, and then pulled a pen and small notepad from one of his many pockets and pouches. “I… left him here, with friends. I cannot go back, knowing what I know now, and with little time left,” he said as he wrote down an address. “If he is still alive.”

He tore off the paper and handed it to Leon. It was in Cyrillic lettering, of course, but Leon figured someone could help him find it. 

“You can come with me; what happened here wasn’t your fault.” 

Buddy shook his head. 

“No, I… I have nothing left. My friends, family, they are dead, or will be soon. America and Russia, they will take the…ah…leash?” He looked up at Leon.

“Reins.”

“They will take reins, and the Pro-Independence Fighters will have no more say than before. Was… for nothing.” He hung his head, coughing again, more violently now, and clutching at his chest. 

“There’s more to life, Buddy—”

“I do not  _ want _ more, Leon. I am tired of fighting.” He looked up again with a pleading look on his face. “Please. Kill me.” 

Leon furrowed his brows. 

“No. You owe it to the people who fought with you, who died beside you. Just because you chose to use the plaga doesn’t mean you have to die here.” 

Buddy’s eyes stung with tears, and anger edged his voice. 

“You do not listen, American. There is nothing for me here! I am tired of fighting for nothing! I do not want to become one of those things, after everything!” 

**_KILL ME._ **

Leon jerked his head to the side, scrunching his eyes closed as Buddy’s voice intruded into his mind again, forcefully. He looked back to the man, brows pulled together. 

Buddy’s face was pale, his eyes tinted a deep red. Dark veins were beginning to creep up his jaw, across his hands. There really wasn’t much time left.

Leon was silent for a long, long moment. 

The blades that were folded against his arms slowly lowered. 

“You… did what you had to do. Or the only thing you thought you could do. I know that. You deserved to see your fight pay off.” 

He slowly, purposefully stepped closer. Buddy watched each step, a visceral fear of the unknown setting him trembling slightly. Leon set a hand on his shoulder. 

Buddy closed his eyes. He deserved no more than this, he thought. He himself had killed Ataman. He knew what to expect. 

“I’m sorry…” 

Leon angled his blade, ready to strike. 

“But I can’t let you throw that all away now. It’s not over yet.”

He plunged the blade through the back of Buddy’s jacket, instead of his head. There was a surprised, choked gasp, before the man cried out. He then pulled the blade back, leaving a growing red stain. 

The last command he’d heard had been so close, it left a sort of resonating echo from the parasite anchored inside Buddy. He’d gotten a sense, almost a hunch, of where it was, and cut just above it. 

Buddy began swearing profusely in Russian as he collapsed to the side. The man gasped and grabbed at the concrete below as one arm was lifted over Leon’s shoulders. Up ahead, American soldiers were just arriving at the end of the street. 

“Come on, Buddy. You have one more fight to finish.” 


	13. Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leon finally gets breakfast, or, the epilogue which I hope gives you as much serotonin as it did me.

Leon smiled down at his phone. There was a small, grainy picture on the screen, but he knew exactly what it was. He could just make out himself viewed from above, with a tiny, pixelated middle finger displayed. 

“Oh, you did see it…”

The picture disappeared, and was replaced by Hunnigan’s unamused face. 

“The DSO was very entertained. I think someone printed it and hung it on the refrigerator in the breakroom.” 

Leon’s smile showed no remorse as he sipped his coffee. 

“So was it you who got the military out there to save our behinds?” 

“If we hadn’t seen the tyrants from the satellite, we would have been clueless. I lost track of you when you went after Scarecrow, and it took me until the attack to find you again.”

“You didn’t see the lickers?”

“You try picking out a bunch of meat-colored monsters from a lot of blood when you’re looking through a satellite…”

“Okay, okay. I get it.”

“But you should know, a temporary government has been set up there by Russian and America now, since Svetlana Belikova is being investigated for her actions.” 

“Got it. Good to know. Can I get back to breakfast now?”

Hunnigan sighed.    
“Fine, we’ll debrief you fully soon. Just check in when you’re done.” 

“Will do.” 

He hung up the phone and started to put it back in his pocket. 

“What, you are not even going to show us picture?”

Leon smirked and pulled the phone back out, bringing up the image and holding it out over the table for Buddy to see. The man crossed his arms on the table, squinting at the little screen judgmentally. Leon zoomed into the tiny picture.

“I think we looked like quite a team there, what do you think?”

“I look dead.”

“You have about 20 pixels, how do you know if you looked dead or not?”

“At least YOU got a picture from space, that’s so cool!” JD was halfway leaning over the table to see the screen too. 

“Hey, hey you’re gonna put your arm in the pancakes, here…” Leon handed the phone off to JD, who sat down to look at it with a big grin. “These… are pancakes right?”

“Blini,” said Buddy with a shrug, sipping his tea. “You make them in pan. Probably same.” 

JD handed back the phone and went back to his food. As Leon took it, he raised a brow. 

“You know, JD. When I got back to the church…saw you up on that altar, fending off five monsters at once… you really looked like you belonged in an action movie. Like Rambo, or… that one with Arnold Schwarzenegger…”   
“Pfff, what, Predator, really? Come one, it felt a lot more like Alien… and then when you came up it was more like Alien vs. Predator…” 

Leon snickered. Early morning light lit up the street outside, bouncing soft light into the diner through the wall of windows in front of him, behind Buddy and JD. Children ran down the cobblestone street, toting bookbags. 

Buddy checked his watch. 

“I should go, before I am late… The students begin to consider anarchy if I am late.”

Leon smirked. 

“That sounds dangerous, you’d better be on time. Thanks for meeting me here though, both of you. It’s… good to catch up.” 

“Well, thank you for breakfast. And… making sure we were here to… have it? No that isn’t right…”

“I catch your drift. You’re uh… welcome.”

Buddy squinted, and JD quickly explained what Leon’s phrase meant. He nodded in understanding, then unlocked the brake on his wheelchair, wheeling back from the table. He straightened his suit and looked back to Leon with a resolute nod. 

JD got up as well, he himself in a suit… a poorly tailored one, but still a suit.

“What do you teach again, JD?”

The man struck a dramatic pose that he probably thought looked very cool, and flicked the sunglasses from his head down over his eyes.

“English Language and Culture, baby.” He gave a strong nod and moved to follow Buddy. He was surprisingly spry for a man recovering from a very invasive parasite-removal surgery. 

Leon grinned and pulled an orange bottle out of his jacket, shaking a couple of pills into his hand and washing them down with coffee. If it weren’t for the inordinate amount of those pills keeping JD’s parasite from latching on in the first place, he was fairly sure the man wouldn’t have made it to a surgery at all. 

Buddy’s parasite had been too far along for that, but all things considered, it could have been worse. 

Leon waved to the two as they went, exchanging goodbyes and watching them head towards the school with the flow of children, before going back to his breakfast. 

He briefly mused about what would have happened here, across the world from his little cabin on the Washington coast, if he had never gotten the call to leave. It was a miserable scenario for everyone except him. He pushed the thought away and took another sip of coffee. 

To stop the nightmare here, it had been worth it.

It was always worth it. 


End file.
